China's transition to a low-carbon economy and climate resilience:

While sustainability is widely recognized as a necessary path for development and climate change mitigation,there is no consensus on this concept's goals and future aspirations.Advocates of a green economy believe that economic growth is a prerequisite for long-term progress and the modernization of society.This entails gradually transi-tioning to a more sustainable economy and addressing carbon emissions.Therefore,there is a need for the scientific community to investigate how different forms of modern-ization affect carbon emissions.This study examines the impact of modernization on carbon emissions in China,the world's largest developing economy,focusing on five in-dicators of sustainable modernization:ecological modernization,agricultural moderniza-tion,digitalization,industrialization,and urbanization.The study analyzes data from 31 Chinese provincial-level regions between 2005 and 2020,using the GeoDetector tech-nique to explore the effects of these indicators on carbon emissions.The spatial analysis reveals a distinct"core-periphery"structure of carbon emissions.The findings demon-strate that ecological modernization and digitalization contribute to reducing emissions.On the other hand,industrialization and urbanization have a positive influence on carbon emissions.Interestingly,agricultural modernization initially increases carbon emissions in the short term but has a diminishing effect in the long term.